Prof. Irene Fizer – England’s Anti-Umbrella History

Excerpts from an interview with Associate Professor of English Irene Fizer were featured on the podcast Pessimists Archive. The podcast referred extensively to Dr. Fizer’s article “The Fur Parasol: Masculine Dress, Prosthetic Skins, and the Making of the English Umbrella in Robinson Crusoe,” published in Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory in a Global Context (Ashgate, 2014). In the 1750s, a London man took to the streets holding an umbrella—and braved jeers, rock-throwing haters, and even a cab that tried to run him over. The podcast explores why rainy England was once anti-umbrella. The Pessimists Archive has a listening audience of approximately 10,000.